Against Cause

T Clark

The idea of causality is something I think about all the time. I've also written about it many times here on the forum. As I see it, it's at the heart of lots of issues that come up here.

As I've often said here, "causality" is a metaphysical concept, by which I mean it represents a point of view, a perspective, not a fact. As R.G. Collingwood might say, the Principle of Sufficient Reason - everything must have a reason or a cause - is an absolute presupposition, not a proposition. Absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false, they have what Collingwood calls "logical efficacy" - they are useful. My position is that the idea of cause is not a very useful concept except in a fairly limited set of circumstances.

This post will present four arguments against cause. As I've thought about them, I've come to see them as really the same argument looked at from different directions.

The chain of causality

Let's try out a few things:

It is my understanding that an asteroid hitting earth about 65 million years ago caused the extinction of many species of animals, including the dinosaurs. If that hadn't happened, it is likely that humans never would have evolved. If that's true, did that asteroid impact cause our existence?

In a similar vein, if Adolph Hitler hadn't been born, my father probably would not have been drafted when he graduated from high school in 1943. If that happened he would have gone on to college and graduated in 1947. He never would have met my mother on the train in New York while he was in school and I never would have been born. None of you would probably have been born either. Did Hitler cause my birth?

Do the movement and impacts of nitrogen and oxygen atoms in a tank of air cause pressure and temperature?

If I hit a cue ball and it bounces off the bumper and into the eight ball which goes in the corner pocket, what caused the eight ball to move into the pocket? Me? The cue? The cue ball? The pool table? My muscles and bones? The electrons in the outer valence orbital of the atoms at the surface of the ball that exert repulsive force as they approach each other? My mother who gave birth to me? My friends who convinced me to go to the bar? The car that I rode in to get to the bar? The star that created all the elements that make up the pool balls?

If I shoot someone with a gun and they die, do I cause their death? Does the gun cause their death? Does the bullet cause their death? Does blood loss cause their death? Does lack of oxygen to their brain cause their death?

Probabilistic Causality

Simple - smoking tobacco causes lung cancer. Ninety percent of people who get lung cancer are smokers. On the other hand, only 10 to 20 percent of smokers get lung cancer. So, those 10 to 20 percent must be affected by other factors that the other 80 to 90 percent aren't - I guess heredity, frequency of smoking, other exposures to toxins, other diseases, dumb luck. It is difficult or impossible to isolate a single cause for any phenomena except in certain limited cases.

Complex systems

In this discussion, I look at causality from the point of view of ecology, which considers biological systems involving interactions among a complex range of biological and environmental factors, but the same principles apply to non-biological systems. Here is a link to an interesting article describing the ecology of salt marshes at a New England location.

https://podolskyr.people.charleston.edu/biol211/p/readings/Bertness.pdf

As the article describes, salt marshes in New England have a certain characteristic structure based primarily on tide levels in the area where they grow. Biologists classify the marsh into two zones which have different characteristics. The zone closest to the water, the low marsh, is located at an elevation below the mean high water level. The primary organisms found there are cordgrass, mussels, and hermit crabs. The high marsh is located at higher elevations where only less frequent inundations take place. The primary organisms found in this area include saltmarsh hay, spikegrass, slender glasswort, and black rush.

Factors that contribute to determining where each organism is found include tide levels; ice scouring; rainfall, soil salinity and compaction; the presence of mussels which provide armoring and hermit crabs which provide soil aeration in the low marsh; and plant characteristics including salt tolerance and root structure. These factors take part in a complex, cyclical interaction which is continually changing as seasons change, climate change progresses, and humans intrude. The linked article is a much more detailed description of the types of processes that take place.

Here's a link to a video which includes a similar explanation for what happened when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone Park.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc52l5ZcAJ0
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gc52l5ZcAJ0&pp=0gcJCRsBo7VqN5tD

This description is somewhat controversial, but my interest is primarily in the type of argument rather than the specifics. For a more nuanced, but longer, discussion, here is a link to another video that I like better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufhnDIhrEYA
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ufhnDIhrEYA

Constraints

When I go back to what I wrote about the chain of causality, one thing that jumps out to me is that constraints—events that prevent future events—have a bigger effect on what happens in the world then causes—events that result in future events. The asteroid didn’t cause humans to evolve, it prevented dinosaurs and other organisms from continuing to evolve. Hitler didn’t cause me to be born, he prevented other potential futures from taking place.

One way of looking at it is that constraints remove possible futures until only one remains. If I’m driving on the road and I get behind a slow moving car, the car ahead of me doesn’t cause me to slow down. It prevents me, constrains me, from going as fast as I would otherwise. I acknowledge that this way of looking at things is a matter of convention, but no more so than looking at it from the point of view of causality.

My conclusion - identifying one element as the cause of another depends on where you look. What constitutes the cause is a matter of convention, not fact. It works when you can isolate the elements of the phenomena you are studying at from their environments, e.g. electrons in a physics experiment. It works for certain everyday events at human scale, e.g. if I push the grocery cart it moves. It is a much less useful explanation for most phenomena. My claim is that there are only a limited number of situations where it has Collingwood’s logical efficacy.

apokrisis

When I go back to what I wrote about the chain of causality, one thing that jumps out to me is that constraints—events that prevent future events—have a bigger effect on what happens in the world then causes—events that result in future events. — T Clark

This is certainly right. And it is why Aristotle identified four “becauses”. So your constraints are formal and final cause. But you also need your degrees of freedom, or efficient and material causes.

Causality as efficient cause is not wrong. It just is always shaped by some prevailing context.

Constraint removes possible futures, but normally still leaves many possibilities open. Accidents can happen. Asteroids could be on paths that just miss the Earth as there was no constraint on that fact.

So constraints determine events, but mostly in only the most general fashion. Rocks normally fall down rather than up. But they could just as well land there as land here.

Accidents are then the opposite of this determination in being the freedom for particular things to have happened within the space of free possibilities. We can tell tales of efficient cause where something might have happened, and then there was a difference because it either did or didn’t.

The asteroid could have been a lucky narrow escape or a historical extinction event. Either way it was determined by the laws of physics. And which thing happened was left as an accident of history.

Of course mechanics would say the asteroid was fated in it trajectory by setting off in some state of initial conditions. But then that would require the arrangement of that very particular set of circumstances for some good reason. An extremely careful choice of starting point in a world that now - looking at things from this complementary point of view - appears not offer any constraint on that being what got chosen. By someone with an interest in the whole affair. Wanting to show how what happened was inevitable from the start.

So causal accounts are flexible like this. We learn to make good choices about how much events are to be explained by contextual circumstances and how much by accidents or free choices.

Which then gets us into what we mean by finality. Rocks have tendencies to fall. Humans can want not to.

Gnomon

As I've often said here, "causality" is a metaphysical concept, by which I mean it represents a point of view, a perspective, not a fact. As R.G. Collingwood might say, the Principle of Sufficient Reason - everything must have a reason or a cause - is an absolute presupposition, not a proposition. — T Clark

Yes. For philosophers "causality" is a metaphysical notion, whereas for physicists it's a practical principle, to aid in understanding how & why things happen. Traditionally, human Logic assumes, as an unproven axiom*1, that every action or event had a prior causal influence, and that causal action in the universe is an unbroken chain (conjunction) of physical cause/effect events. Except of course, for those who believe in metaphysical causes, such as divine intervention or random accidents (disjunction).

The title of this tread seems to imply that our common logical assumption of Causation is unscientific & non-empirical, as argued by Hume's dissection of Induction, Reduction, and Deduction. Which leaves open-to-negation such logical postulates as Universal Causation, and First Cause. Hence, the never-ending inconclusive threads on this forum. Where we heap up individual facts or beliefs, and try to make sense of them by means of the reasoning that Hume & Collingwood undermined with skeptical analysis. Ironically, that swampy quicksand logic allows people of Faith to claim that their metaphysical "reasons" & divine revelations are just as valid as a scientist's physical-empirical Facts & Faxioms.

So, where does that leave us public reasoners on a non-empirical (metaphysical) philosophical forum? Are the conjunctions in our reasoning so weak that none of our arguments will hang-together under the universal solvent of skepticism? Are our fundamental (self-evident) axioms only valid within a single isolated-but-united Faith community (-isms)? :cool:

*1. Logical Axioms :
Yes, axioms can be considered a type of presupposition, as they are foundational statements accepted as true without proof to serve as the starting point for reasoning within a specific system. While all axioms function as presuppositions, a key distinction is that an axiom is a presupposition that is considered self-evident or unquestionable within its context, whereas not all presuppositions are necessarily self-evident or accepted without controversy.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=are+axioms+presuppositions

Banno

↪T Clark

Yes!

JuanZu

Is everything causally connected to everything else? If I throw a ball from the fifth floor, I know that the cause of the ball falling is because I threw it. And I don't have to look for the cause in, say, the movements of the stars. So it seems that not everything is causally connected to everything else. There are limits to causal influence.

apokrisis

If I throw a ball from the fifth floor, I know that the cause of the ball falling is because I threw it. — JuanZu

But did you mean to throw it down by throwing it out? Your own action only imparted a thrust that should have seen it travel on forever along that straight line. It is only because the ball encountered both friction and a gravitational field that it was caused to instead curve.

Though of course you could have factored those effects into your throw and thus know that the cause of it landing where it did was down to an artfully arranged mix of your freedom to launch a ball in a direction and the inevitability of what would happen thereafter due to contextual constraints.

JuanZu

It is only because the ball encountered both friction and a gravitational field that it was caused to instead curve — apokrisis

I do not deny that this is related. But I wonder: how far should we extend our view in casual relationships? If it is true that the movement of the stars does not explain why the ball fell to the ground from the fifth floor, it follows that there is a kind of causal disconnection. In that sense, one might say: there is continuity and there is causal discontinuity. This reminds me of Plato's concept of symploke.

apokrisis

If it is true that the movement of the stars does not explain why the ball fell to the ground from the fifth floor, it follows that there is a kind of causal disconnection. — JuanZu

Exactly. From our human point of view, we want to know about our causal freedoms. We want a notion of causality that puts us in the centre of the Cosmos, large and in charge, the maker of purpose and the decider of form. This just what is natural to being an organism that lives by exploiting the possibilities of its environment. We come at nature with our cunning causal plans.

We throw a ball at exactly the angle where nature takes over the rest of the chore of hitting some desired spot. And it is important to know that far off stars can't affect that in being too distant in spacetime. Otherwise we would have to factor them into our mental calculus too.

And indeed, our causal narratives used to take celestial influences quite seriously. Conjunctions of constellations needed their horoscopic interpretations if we were to make wise decision down here on Earth.

So causality is the narrative we tell, the map of how to get to where we want. But then philosophy came along and started injecting a little more metaphysical rigour into this exercise. What was causality as a narrative at the level of the Cosmos itself?

T Clark

Causality as efficient cause is not wrong. It just is always shaped by some prevailing context. — apokrisis

It seems to me that the cause people are talking about when they talk about everything having a cause is efficient cause. Do you disagree? Maybe I should have called this thread "Against Efficient Cause."

When you say "context" I think you are saying something similar to what I meant when I wrote "What constitutes the cause is a matter of convention, not fact. It works when you can isolate the elements of the phenomena you are studying at from their environments..."

Constraint removes possible futures, but normally still leaves many possibilities open. Accidents can happen. Asteroids could be on paths that just miss the Earth as there was no constraint on that fact. — apokrisis

Sure, when we're talking about asteroids or artillery rounds, but what about when we're talking about complex systems like the salt marsh I discussed.

So causal accounts are flexible like this. We learn to make good choices about how much events are to be explained by contextual circumstances and how much by accidents or free choices. — apokrisis

I have no problem with this, but I think sometimes, often, it doesn't make sense to consider causality at all.

T Clark

For philosophers "causality" is a metaphysical notion, whereas for physicists it's a practical principle, to aid in understanding how & why things happen. — Gnomon

Causality is practical, useful, to scientists sometimes. Sometimes not. Physicists more often than biologists.

Ironically, that swampy quicksand logic allows people of Faith to claim that their metaphysical "reasons" & divine revelations are just as valid as a scientist's physical-empirical Facts & Faxioms. — Gnomon

I don't see how the kinds of issues I'm talking about have anything to do with religion.

So, where does that leave us public reasoners on a non-empirical (metaphysical) philosophical forum? Are the conjunctions in our reasoning so weak that none of our arguments will hang-together under the universal solvent of skepticism? Are our fundamental (self-evident) axioms only valid within a single isolated-but-united Faith community (-isms)? — Gnomon

I'm confused. Denying that of the idea of cause is always a useful one has nothing to do with skepticism.

T Clark

Is everything causally connected to everything else? If I throw a ball from the fifth floor, I know that the cause of the ball falling is because I threw it. And I don't have to look for the cause in, say, the movements of the stars. So it seems that not everything is causally connected to everything else. There are limits to causal influence. — JuanZu

how far should we extend our view in casual relationships? If it is true that the movement of the stars does not explain why the ball fell to the ground from the fifth floor, it follows that there is a kind of causal disconnection. In that sense, one might say: there is continuity and there is causal discontinuity. — JuanZu

I think you're talking about the same thing I was when I discussed the idea of cause only being useful when we can separate the events in question from their surrounding environment. If I wanted, I could find a causal connection between the stars and the ball, but it is not relevant to the question at hand.

T Clark

So causality is the narrative we tell, the map of how to get to where we want. But then philosophy came along and started injecting a little more metaphysical rigour into this exercise. What was causality as a narrative at the level of the Cosmos itself? — apokrisis

Again--but sometimes the concept of causality is just not a useful one.

JuanZu

I think you're talking about the same thing I was when I discussed the idea of cause only being useful when we can separate the events in question from their surrounding environment. — T Clark

The question is: when we separate the events in question from their surrounding environment, is it simply an epistemic construct or is there really an objective kind of disconnect?

T Clark

The question is: when we separate the events in question from their surrounding environment, is it simply an epistemic construct or is there really an objective kind of disconnect? — JuanZu

I call causality a metaphysical principle. Is that what you mean by "epistemic construct?"

apokrisis

Maybe I should have called this thread "Against Efficient Cause." — T Clark

Well there is nothing wrong with efficient cause in itself. It is part of the Aristotelean package. And clearly it is the notion of cause that we humans have in front of mind. We are always looking for the switches to switch and the levers to pull. Where we fit into nature, into the flow of the world, is where we can insert a choice - a difference that makes a difference.

So there is no surprise that folk would see efficient cause as what matters most. That is what the game of life is all about for us. Making things happen that otherwise wouldn't have just happened by themself. If they happen by themself, then we either have to learn to live with it or find ways to prevent. If it rains, we put roofs on our houses. It still rains, but now we don't get so wet. The roof is the switch and lever – the effective cause of water being diverted suddenly sideways.

When you say "context" I think you are saying something similar to what I meant when I wrote "What constitutes the cause is a matter of convention, not fact. — T Clark

Context would be the facts about what constrains the possibilities as the other kind of facts. So not merely a matter of convention. But we are then free to call on both kinds of fact as it appears to suit us. So in the causal narrative we create, conventions can form in what we tend to stress and what we don't.

If I want to teach you to throw a basketball, I wouldn't bother starting with a physics class. But I might draw attention to the mechanics – how you set up your hands and your joints as the right kind of initial conditions for your body as an evolved system of switches and levers ready to fire.

Sure, when we're talking about asteroids or artillery rounds, but what about when we're talking about complex systems like the salt marsh I discussed. — T Clark

Sure. Things get interesting when we jump from complicated systems to complex systems. One where life and mind are intruding on the physics to help organise nature.

But haven't I bored you to death about that already? Physics only has the broadest notions of finality. It has its global constraints that boil down to thermodynamics and dissipative structure. Its only ruling tendency is to increase entropy. And it will spend a little negentropy to get there. A vortex develops as a structure to drain your bath as that way it starts to drain a lot quicker. Air and water can change places far faster and the job of equilibration gets done much sooner.

Then life and mind come along and note that this is the causality of physics. You are allowed to exist under the scope of becoming an informationally-complex dissipative structure. If you can add efficient cause – some system of levers and switches that unblock pent-up entropy flows – then physics will pay for you for that small service. Become the blades of vegetation intercepting the sun, become the little critters with legs, mouths and arses. Get focused on imposing a causal mechanics on the world and you can have a job for life, even if you accelerate the entropification of nature just a tiny bit.

A human runs with the power consumption of a 100 watt bulb. At least they did until they upskilled from being just foragers scratching around salt marshes for whatever they could jam in their gob.

I have no problem with this, but I think sometimes, often, it doesn't make sense to consider causality at all. — T Clark

That is an idea completely baffling to me. How can you even think if not causally? What would that even look like?

Janus

It is my understanding that an asteroid hitting earth about 65 million years ago caused the extinction of many species of animals, including the dinosaurs. If that hadn't happened, it is likely that humans never would have evolved. If that's true, did that asteroid impact cause our existence? — T Clark

There are efficient causes and then there are overall conditions. Perhaps the overall conditions for the evolution of humans would not have obtained if the asteroid had not hit. Some seem to consider overall conditions to be equivalent to final causation not efficient causation.

JuanZu

I call causality a metaphysical principle. Is that what you mean by "epistemic construct?" — T Clark

No. I mean, is the discontinuity in the chain of causality something that we simply draw subjectively so that we do not have to go to infinity, or is it something objective in the world, that there is actually a type of discontinuity in the causality of the world that explains why we explain some things better with a specific causality and not with just any causality?

T Clark

No. I mean, is the discontinuity in the chain of causality something that we simply draw subjectively so that we do not have to go to infinity, or is it something objective in the world, that there is actually a type of discontinuity in the causality of the world that explains why we explain some things better with a specific causality and not with just any causality? — JuanZu

Do distant galaxies influence everyday activities here on earth? Sure, recent studies of gravity waves show they can have an influence from billions of light years away, but very, very minimally. Very very, very minimally. So minimally that it makes no sense to consider it in any evaluation of causality here. The LIGO detectors can reportedly measure disturbances of less than the diameter of an atom. Please don’t ask me how.

T Clark

There are efficient causes and then there are overall conditions. Perhaps the overall conditions for the evolution of humans would not have obtained if the asteroid had not hit. — Janus

What are the efficient causes of evolution?

Some seem to consider overall conditions to be equivalent to final causation not efficient causation. — Janus

I don’t get that. It’s certainly different than my understanding of final cause.

T Clark

I have no problem with this, but I think sometimes, often, it doesn't make sense to consider causality at all.
— T Clark

That is an idea completely baffling to me. How can you even think if not causally? What would that even look like? — apokrisis

This surprises me. I think of you as intellectually committed to a holistic approach. As I see it, reductionism and causality go hand-in-hand.

Well there is nothing wrong with efficient cause in itself. It is part of the Aristotelean package. And clearly it is the notion of cause that we humans have in front of mind. We are always looking for the switches to switch and the levers to pull. Where we fit into nature, into the flow of the world, is where we can insert a choice - a difference that makes a difference. — apokrisis

As a civil engineer, I’m one of those guys always looking for switches and levers. Over my career I’ve seen how disruptive that kind of approach can be—applying rational methods that ignore environmental and social context.

Context would be the facts about what constrains the possibilities as the other kind of facts. — apokrisis

Again, looking at my engineering experience, ignoring context is what leads to unintended consequences. It makes it impossible to pull those levers, push those buttons, and get the kind of results you expect and desire.

Then life and mind come along and note that this is the causality of physics. You are allowed to exist under the scope of becoming an informationally-complex dissipative structure. If you can add efficient cause – some system of levers and switches that unblock pent-up entropy flows – then physics will pay for you for that small service. Become the blades of vegetation intercepting the sun, become the little critters with legs, mouths and arses. Get focused on imposing a causal mechanics on the world and you can have a job for life, even if you accelerate the entropification of nature just a tiny bit. — apokrisis

I don’t get this. It seems wildly simplistic and optimistic. This is the kind of thinking that leads to climate change. Not only do you focus in unrealistically closely on the causes, but also focus in unrealistically closely on the results.

apokrisis

This surprises me. I think of you as intellectually committed to a holistic approach. As I see it, reductionism and causality go hand-in-hand. — T Clark

But isn't my argument here that holism means all four of Aristotle's four causes. And reductionism just means material and efficient cause. Or even in very reduced renderings, just efficient cause. Closed patterns of logical entailment. The stuff of logical atomism.

So that is why I don't understand why you would seem to say you would rather let go completely of causality – and in return for what exactly – while I instead make causality my preoccupation. I can't really see what else there is except the question of why we exist in a Cosmos with a rational order. Causality is the primary metaphysical fact. It is the basis of any explanation or narrative we might have.

Unless we are instead doing ... what?

Over my career I’ve seen how disruptive that kind of approach can be—applying rational methods that ignore environmental and social context. — T Clark

I started out in ecology so was already beginning from there. :up:

This is the kind of thinking that leads to climate change. — T Clark

Well yes. It indeed explains it in causal terms.

Why are we humans cooking the planet? Well fossil fuel hydrocarbons weren't properly entropified back at the time they should have been.

First, bacteria and fungi couldn't decompose the lignin that plants had just invented so as to compete with each other in the new terrestrial race to grow the highest and reach the most sunlight. So someone had to come along eventually to recycle that fossilised polymer. We humans showed up with our steam engines and turbines. We have been scaling up the burning at an exponential rate as there was no obvious reason not to do so. Then by the time a reason showed, we have created a whole culture around exponentialising the breakdown of the stored energy of that buried lignin.

Oil and gas are another such historical accident. The ancient warm and shallow seas went through an explosive era of planktonic growth. But when this died and fell to the depths, the oxygen depleted bottom water couldn't support the aerobic bacteria needed to decompose it. So that got covered over in sediment layers and again became a dense deposit of fossil hydrocarbon in want of a species with the kind of digestive juices that could stomach it. Or at least the machines that would madly burn it at a compounding rate of growth while being protected and maintained by the kind of human society that couldn't imagine any better form of existence.

So – with my ecology hat on – the causal explanation for climate change is as plain as the nose on your face. Nothing would even have gone wrong if the damn planet had the atmospheric physics which would have released the heat all this industrial burning was producing rather than trapping it with the greenhouse gases the burning also created.

It is just a case of bad engineering at the geophysical level. The combustion chamber lacked sufficient heat exchange in its design.

And bad luck that biology didn't keep up with the biomass it was producing from the late Paleozoic era through much of the Mesozoic, so creating an entropy gradient so steep that quite outrageous versions of biological order had to be evolved to get it moving again through a planetary scale dissipative structure.

JuanZu

↪T Clark

Now think about it the other way : I take a walk in the woods. Does that affect, say, the orbit of Jupiter? Let's think about one of the countless human actions. Since there are so many, shouldn't they alter the orbit of Jupiter?

PoeticUniverse

The idea of causality is something I think about all the time. — T Clark

For convenience, perhaps, we impose boundaries on causes for effects; however, causes go all the way back…

Against Cause

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